Abstract/Description

A vibrant, resilient and productive agricultural sector is fundamental to achieving the Sustainable Development
Goals. Bringing about such a transformation requires optimizing a range of agronomic, environmental and socioeconomic
outcomes from agricultural systems – from crop yields, to biodiversity, to human nutrition. However,
these outcomes are not independent of each other – they interact in both positive and negativeways, creating the
potential for synergies and trade-offs. Consequently, transforming the agricultural sector for the age of sustainable
development requires tracking these interactions, assessing if objectives are being achieved and allowing
for adaptivemanagement within the diverse agricultural systems that make up global agriculture. This paper reviews
the field of agricultural trade-off analysis, which has emerged to better understand these interactions –
fromfield to farm, region to continent. Taking a “cradle-to-grave” approach,we distill agricultural trade-off analysis
into four steps: 1) characterizing the decision setting and identifying the context-specific indicators needed
to assess agricultural sustainability, 2) selecting the methods for generating indicator values across different
scales, 3) deciding on the means of evaluating and communicating the trade-off options with stakeholders and
decision-makers, and 4) improving uptake of trade-off analysis outputs by decision-makers. Given the breadth
of the Sustainable Development Goals and the importance of agriculture to many of them, we assess notions of
human well-being beyond income or direct health concerns (e.g. related to gender, equality, nutrition), as well
as diverse environmental indicators ranging from soil health to biodiversity to climate forcing. Looking forward,
areas of future work include integrating the four steps into a single modeling platform and connecting tools
across scales and disciplines to facilitate trade-off analysis. Likewise, enhancing the policy relevance of agricultural
trade-off analysis requires improving scientist-stakeholder engagement in the research process. Only then can
this field proactively address trade-off issues that are integral to sustainably intensifying local and global agriculture
– a critical step toward successfully implementing the Sustainable Development Goals.